Health Data Exchange during Transfer of Multi-morbid Elderly

Abstract: This project aimed to enhance communication and collaboration among care providers in Stockholm Region and Stockholm Municipality by analyzing health data in various medical record systems and identifying the data that needs to be shared to support elderly individuals with multi-morbidity. Interviews with health experts, caregivers, and policymakers, as well as a literature review, were conducted to gather data. The findings indicated that caring for multi-morbid elderly individuals poses many challenges, including managing multiple chronic conditions, the risk of adverse drug interactions, physical and emotional burden, reduced functional ability, social isolation, and economic consequences. A holistic approach to care is needed, including coordinating care across multiple specialities, addressing social and psychological factors, and providing support for caregivers. Additionally, health data sharing could help with the challenges of ageing and multi-morbidity, but barriers to accessing relevant health data exist. The barriers include a lack of measurement values, different systems used in different healthcare facilities, outdated systems and a large amount of health data existing as free-text notes which make it difficult to extract useful information. Therefore, new HIE solutions are needed to improve patient safety and better integrate existing systems. Future work should focus on improving the accessibility and usability of health data, addressing security and privacy issues, and promoting standardization and interoperability.